Tabs Out

Larry Wish – -Ning Bugs

1.24.19 by Ryan Masteller

Gosh, if I didn’t know that Larry Wish ran Bumpy out of Minneapolis, I’d be all like, yuck, Larry Wish and Bumpy have their hands all over each other’s business. It’s gross. But since they’re essentially the same entity, we can let it slide this time, instead pretending those hands are waving in front of our faces and leaving chemtrails because I think we’re tripping hard off “-Ning Bugs.” This is so disorienting – I wanna get comfortable and slip into this tape; I want it to caress my every pop fantasy and nourish me like a candy bar. But no – it’s making me think!

Also caressing my every pop fantasy too, I guess. Just in a cockeyed fashion that I wasn’t necessarily expecting.

Larry Wish recorded “-Ning Bugs” (slang for hounds, not some sort of Fraggle creature that lost its “Light”) in 2012, and here we are in 2019 with its delightful new physical presence in reissued and (finally) mastered form. It’s like it’s never been gone, like it hasn’t been seven whole years since its kaleidoscopic and off-kilter melodies graced our ears. Not that we should be upset or anything – Larry Wish certainly has kept us sated for Larry Wish–related musicality, and pretty much everything he touches could be described with “kaleidoscopic” and “off-kilter melody,” like he were fronting the Electric Mayhem as they melted under a heat lamp.

“-Ning Bugs” teeters on the edge of naïveté, but as Larry describes it, it’s a knowing naïveté, like you’re aware that you don’t really have a grasp on anything. While that might sound bleak – and this is the kind of dead-of-winter philosophizing you might expect in January or February in Minnesota – it’s actually quite freeing: there’s a lot that you can embrace and experience with that worldview. And Larry Wish – whose real name is Adam Werven (what?!?) – flits back and forth among the blooming flowers he’s imagining and painting his sonic canvas with vivid, celebratory colors. He even covers Stone Temple Pilots. I dunno man, when you’re in the right mood, you can do whatever you want.

So wave those hands in front of your frickin face till you’re all wobbly, then embrace the technicolor weirdness of “-Ning Bugs” in all its resonant glory. There are 100 of these suckers just waiting to be purchased.

Euglossine – Coriolis

1.23.19 by Ryan Masteller

What were you even doing in science class anyway – sleeping, doing your algebra homework, standing in your open bookbag while your teacher’s head cocks confusedly and eyes narrow in bewilderment in frustration? All of the above? I was listening, paying attention like my life depended on it – and for all I know it does, sometime in the future – and sitting at my desk like a regular person without any weird personality glitches. Unlike Phil in his bookbag over there!

Phil always made me laugh.

Anyway, Euglossine, aka Tristan Whitehill, aka “Gainesville’s finest,” has been studying up on physics, reading a little bit about “Coriolis” and its attendant “Effect,” applying what he’s learned to a guitar-based tropicalia mélange that’s as refreshing as the breezes I’m about to discuss. See, turns out that if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, the rotation of the Earth causes moving objects – in a practical sense, weather objects, like clouds, winds, etc. – to the right, but if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, watch out! Those same objects will move to the left. Check out Wikipedia if you don’t believe me. Who needs textbooks?

As is his wont, Whitehill treats his guitar gently, caressing it, and also using synthesizers and saxophone (I’m guessing – who knows what’s real anymore!), caressing them as well, whispering romance through his fingers and across the frets, over the keys, dancing in the moonlight of a tropical shore. The Coriolis Effect causes the rainbow ribbon of his heart (and tape cover) to gently drift along with the ocean breeze TO THE RIGHT, because this is the Northern Hemisphere after all. Sand and surf and suntan lotion scents drift along the shoreline, and various margarita-based cocktails are served by indigenous crustaceans. Crabs mostly. Very helpful crabs, always slightly listing to the right…

Beautiful work as always by Mr. Euglossine. Pro-dubbed blue C37 tape with black imprints available at Hausu Mountain. Drops February 15, but Max and Doug are PROMISING the tape will ship “on or around January 23.” That’s a PROMISE! For now you can stream “Daylight,” though.

Bloor – Drolleries

1.22.19 by Ryan Masteller

Bloor! I’m not gonna lie, that’s the exact sound I make when I spew all over the place. But this isn’t about me or the awful noises I make or the awful things that come out of my body or the awful mess I usually have to clean up afterward. This is about Bloor, an NYC trio that has, over the past few years, been honing their own set of stinking blurts and blasts while stunned audiences sit in shock … until they’re finished playing at least, then those audiences erupt into glorious applause. Pro tip: this is exactly what you want an audience to do after you’ve finished playing them some of your music.

Saxophonist Sam Weinberg (W-2) is behind Bloor, and he’s joined by guitarist Andrew Smiley (Little Women, Feast of the Epiphany) and drummer Jason Nazary (Little Women, Anteloper). Together they rip through the Bloor playbook, which here consists of ten tracks with names like “Bast,” “Defacer,” and “Liber Scivias,” all of which sound like ways to strip meat from bone. And that’s sort of what listening to Bloor feels like, like you’re heading face-first into some sort of industrial meat processor and you come out the other side with mostly bones showing. Taking cues from Arthur Blythe (to whom “Splice” is dedicated), Harry Pussy, Sonny Sharrock, and certainly the rest of the Astral Spirits roster, Bloor dismantles the ideas of traditional jazz and experimental music and repurposes bits of them for their own monstrous Frankensteinian creations. Always unnerving, never unnerved, Bloor make restlessness sound like the next frontier in philosophical composition – just how thoroughly can one band explore the rocks and crags and fissures of its potential?

Also, “Drolleries” refers to the “small creatures adorning the margins of 13th-15th century illuminated manuscripts.” That’s seems so weird and yet so appropriate somehow, like those little creatures were running around on the instruments and magically making them play with their passage.

“Edition of 150 tapes with ORANGE tape shell. Design by Jaime Zuverza.” It will NOT make you bloor or blurt or spew or whatever. Release date is January 25 on Astral Spirits. Please hurry!